Cinnamon Twigs (4 page)

             
Mrs Harper grinned widely at me later that evening, revealing her brilliant white teeth and wishing me luck for the future. She knew I’d go far, because I had good looks and intelligence. I thanked her for the compliment and for helping me so much. She would always be my favorite teacher.

             
The prom ended and I suddenly realized I’d miss high school life - the good times and the bad. But the party hadn’t ended yet. A large group of us stumbled towards Cardiff castle and into the nearby woods. There, under the overhanging branches of great oak trees, we sat on the grass, smoked and drank. Moonlight crept across the muddy ground and the scents of spirits and cigarette smoke filled the air. I lit my first cigarette, letting the smoke float above me like an elegant cloud, while I spluttered. Everyone drank too much. My mate Matt tread on blooming daffodils before resting against a tree, his eyes fixed on the vertiginous ground while he slurred, ‘Vroddka!’

             
The alcohol made me brave. I gazed at Olivia while pouring straight vodka down my neck, and then I told her how I felt. But she only saw me as a friend. I tried to convince her to give me a go, but even my muddy tux couldn’t stop me from floundering. I’d spent all that time thinking about her, wondering when we’d get married, how many kids we’d have and what she liked for breakfast. But as she stood up, silhouetted against the pale moonlight, I realized I’d wasted my time.

             
I bimbled home very late and very drunk, stinking of booze and fags. My mother had been worried sick.

             
‘Where the hell have you been?’ she roared. ‘The prom ended hours ago!’

             
‘You knows how’s it is,’ I slurred.

             
‘Have you been drinking?’

             
‘Yeah, I’ve has one or two.’

             
‘What were you drinking?’

             
‘Uh?’

             
‘What were you drinking?’

             
‘Yeah, one or two.’

             
‘No.’ She actually clenched her fists. ‘I said
what
have you been drinking?’

             
‘Vroddka!’

             
The next day, I learned a lesson about drinking copious amounts of alcohol. My mother lectured me, while I dipped my head over the familiar toilet bowl and said goodbye to my prom meal. Fortunately I wasn’t grounded for too long, because my GCSE results were pretty decent.

             
After contemplating my first crush and my memories of high school over the summer, I prepared for college and the new lessons I’d learn.

CHAPTER SIX

College and Musicals

A great atmosphere filled my college. It
traveled among the motley crowds in the corridors, swirled around the pretty girls and hovered in a faint September breeze. I met many new friends and spent my lunchtimes playing rugby or smoking cigarettes.

             
I studied Drama, History and English Literature. All my classmates had studied Drama at high school. So I had a lot of catching up to do, but I worked hard, reading about theatre practitioners like Stanislavski, Artaud and Brecht. During my first week of college, auditions were held for the musical version of Victor Hugo’s
Les Misérables
. As I wandered into the audition room, a lad turned to me and asked, ‘Can you sing?’

             
‘No, not really. Can you?’

             
‘Not as far as I’m aware.’

             
‘What are we doing here?’ I laughed.

             
‘My name’s Michael.’ He grinned.

             
‘Mine’s Daniel.’

             
The audition went okay, considering I didn’t exactly have the best singing voice in the world. But Michael gave a superb audition. When he wasn’t tensing his biceps or showing his chiseled abs to the nearest girl, he sang beautifully, in the haunting notes of a curlew. He was cast in the lead role, as Jean Valjean. I ended up playing a pimp.

             
I hit the weights to stand out like Michael. My shoulders exploded, and I soon found I could mimic Michael’s leonine gait. He believed you had to be supremely confident to be an achiever.

             
‘I know what’ll get you far in life,’ he once said to me. ‘Love that is bent towards self, or “
incurvatus in se ipsium
”. That’ll give you a sense of importance.’

             
‘You mean self-importance, Narcissus.’ I grinned. ‘I’ve gotta say, despite your surfer dude qualities, mate, you’re actually very clever.’

             
‘I’ll take that as a compliment…’

             
I spent a lot of time strutting around with a large group of friends, trying to be James Dean with my brown leather jacket and shiny cigarette case. I also liked to be alone sometimes, so I could play the part of the brooding hero, smoking a cigarette under the September sunlight in pensive quietude.

             
Michael and I liked to hang out in the local park, smoking marijuana. The sweet scents of primy flowers touched our nostrils, and the vivid greens whirled around us as we sailed across the turf. When we weren’t high, we were at the pub getting drunk before lessons. We’d stumble into rehearsals, trying to suppress our giggles. Our musical director Mrs Weir took the production very seriously and often chucked plectrums and drumsticks at us for upping an octave or botching a line. She didn’t like me at all, because I mistook a quaver for a savory snack. But her desire for perfection meant the musical turned out to be excellent.

             
People traveled a long way to see the annual shows, and the past college productions of
Oklahoma
and
Fame
had achieved legendary statuses. ‘Les Mis,’ as the cast affectionately called our musical, was mentioned on radio stations and in newspapers. Extra tickets had to be printed for the last night due to popular demand. The show became a brilliant montage of sporadic lights, beating drums and white smoke rising above the barricades. When the five nights of chaos ended, I knew I’d miss the costumes and props.

             
The cast celebrated the show at a local restaurant. It had been a long week and none of us had slept properly, so after a couple of beverages we became dribbling wrecks. Michael and I were given the award for
Production’s Biggest Pair of Tits
. We had everyone singing songs from the show, which continued even as we stumbled towards town, exclaiming, ‘One day more!’

The play is over. And now it’s time

for the familiar after-show party -

debauched, full of booze, cigarettes,

and sometimes drugs. Actors will do

just about anything to get away

from themselves. The more liquid goes in,

the more liquid pours out. This starts with the girls, who wipe their eyes

with
a tablecloth, murmur lost lines.

It reminds me of school. The kids,

watery-eyed, missing their mothers.

The play was our mother, I guess.

Now we’ve been dropped off her lap.

How many casts have felt like this?

Awards are handed out by the director:

‘
Production’s Biggest Pair of Tits’,

much to the disappointment
of the girls, goes to me and my mate.

I stumble
over a chair, top up

my spilt drink
and murmur what

I can remember
of a Senecan line:

‘
Every new beginning comes

from another beginning
’s end.’

People are too pissed to notice.

             
I woke up two days later wondering how I’d gotten home, the memories of heavy music and murky mishaps slowly coming back to me.

             
I jumped at the opportunity of doing
West Side Story
with an amateur theatre company in Canton, near my old neighborhood. I loved that theatre and its arty atmosphere, the troubled writers editing their manuscripts in the café, and the walls plastered with anarchic art. It was there that I realized I gravitated towards the arty types, those with odd piercings who liked to play the guitar at any opportunity, sang obscure ditties and talked about politics but believed politics was just for the ‘white shirts’ and ‘stiff collars.’

             
I played a Jet, so most of my scenes involved heavy dance choreography. The director Robert wanted to do something different with the show.
West Side Story
is a sacred cow, but he took it to pastures new. A lot of effort went into making the fight scenes realistic and emphasizing the brutality of gang warfare. The only time the Jets seemed likeable and cuddly was during their mimicry of Officer Krupke. I had to work hard during rehearsals, because I wasn’t a natural dancer. The camp choreographer constantly hounded me until I got the routines right.

             
‘Come on, Daniel. This isn’t difficult!’ he’d bark. ‘You don’t know what difficult is. Difficulty is tucking your package out of the way when you’re playing a drag queen in
Cabaret
, and nearly fucking yourself when you do the splits.’

             
As the show drew closer, I told Robert I was struggling with some of the dance routines. He told me to relax; he knew I’d get it together in time. I paid a lot of attention to his style, because I wanted to be a director one day.

             
The first performance night went okay, apart from a few botched lines and black eyes. The rest of the week went really well. The audience loved the show; they could see how much the cast were enjoying themselves. I relaxed and danced like a professional. My mother came to watch me but she wasn’t impressed. She said I looked like a stiff bodybuilding thug and we argued in the car on the way home.

             
‘You’d have to win an Oscar to make me believe that prancing around on stage is the right career path for you!’ She laughed.

             
I told her to give me time.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
attered Spines and Dusty Shelves

Posters requesting help for the student newspaper
The College Column
concealed the chipped paint on the walls. I met the editor and showed him some poetry I’d written.

             
‘A poetry section could be interesting,’ he said.

             
‘You could call it
The Poet’s Corner
,’ I suggested as if on a whim (I’d actually spent all night conceiving what I thought was, at the very least, an ingenious title…).                                                                                     ‘That sounds good. I like it!’

             
My mates laughed at me. They thought poetry was for girls. And they were right: the college girls took a keen interest in my poesies.

             
‘Well,’ Michael told me, ‘chicks dig all that poetic crap. You could be a college sex symbol before long.’

             
During lunchtimes, the college library morphed into the papal court of Avignon, and I became a regular Fransesco Petrarca. Girls watched me while I scribbled my verses among the tattered spines and dusty shelves. They fluttered their eyelashes over their books and smiled, often enquiring what my next poem would be about. My mates suddenly became very jealous.

             
People asked me if I wrote about a particular girl in my sonnets. But I imagined an idealized girl, just as Shakespeare imagined a dark lady and fair youth, because none of the girls I’d snogged during college parties really interested me. It would take a special girl to distract me from my self-love. Michael, on the other hand, had no interest in relationships and dating whatsoever.

             
‘Dating a girl is like reading James Joyce’s
Ulysses
. You always wish you hadn’t started it. We’re all gonna be tamed by time and its baggage eventually, dude. So you should pause before you rush regret,’ he said.

             
Despite Michael’s pretentious epigrams, I liked the idea of meeting a girl I could do ‘couply things’ with, but I wouldn’t have told him that. He didn’t appreciate such talk.

             
I really wanted to have my poetry read, so I considered compiling my work and getting a book published. After months of receiving polite rejection letters, I turned to the idea of self-publishing. If I paid to get myself in print, I’d have something to show a professional publisher. I would kill two birds with one stone if I got myself a job: I’d have enough money to get my name out there, and my mother would stop moaning about my unemployment. I started working as a paper boy, which gave me good exercise before going to college in the mornings. But the job didn’t last long. I pinched a trolley from a supermarket to put all the newspapers in, but the trolley rolled down a hill and smashed into a parked Porsche. My employer fired me as soon as he found out.